VANCOUVER, BC-In a dimly lit auditorium, more than 100 Christians, ranging from teenagers to senior citizens, eyeballed the buffed bodies of eight swimsuit-clad men and women from the cast of the reality TV show "Temptation Island."

"Reality TV creates a vacuum where our deepest and darkest orientations are increasingly indulged," said speaker Jock McGregor. Moments later, he removed the transparency slide from the overhead projector. All around, there were quiet sighs of relief among those gathered for the four-day L'Abri conference in Vancouver.

McGregor continued: "While not all reality shows are prurient, all reality shows confuse reality. We should be making friends, building intimacy with our loved ones and filling ourselves with the reality of God's presence in our congregational worship and prayer. These are the avenues for true reality," said McGregor, a staff member of L'Abri Fellowship, founded by Francis and Edith Schaeffer in 1955.

Hot topics
McGregor's talk was one of several dozen lectures and workshops at the August 5-8 conference, held on the campus of the University of British Columbia.

As part of the conference theme, "Understanding our times…Knowing what to do," the speakers engaged a variety of cultural hot topics in North America including Eastern spirituality, reality TV and the Olympics, as well as the relationship between God and blues music. This is L'Abri's third conference in Canada.

Andrew Fellows delivered the opening lecture, emphasizing the crucial need for Christians to engage society and culture with the love of Christ.

"The church has become a minority group in most of the Western world. This has massive ramifications. The church has been dislocated from the centre of society," he said. "In contrast, when our social identity is first rooted in Christ, then we are free to engage with our world."

George Bradford, a Toronto-based pastor and one of the conference organizers, notes that the goal of the conference was to encourage Christians to think deeply, stretch their minds and explore cultural touch points that may have been ignored by the evangelical mainstream.

Touching lives
"L'Abri is strategic in terms of touching lives," says Bradford, whose son, Richard, serves on staff at a L'Abri community in Switzerland, where people live and work together as they seek answers to honest questions about God and the significance of human life.

Adds Bradford: "Many people, whose lives have been turned around by God at L'Abri, have ended up in places of significance. And they, in turn, have impacted even more people."

Those influenced by L'Abri include Os Guinness, Harold O.J. Brown, Ranald Macaulay, Chuck Colson and Dick Keyes. They are among the keynote speakers at L'Abri's 50th anniversary conference in Saint Louis, Missouri, March 11-13, 2005-which celebrates the legacy of the Schaeffer family as well as looking to the future (www.labrijubilee.org).

L'Abri established its newest Canadian centre on Bowen Island in July, a 20-minute ferry ride from Vancouver. Since then, Doug and Maggie Curry, who live there with their four children, have hosted several groups of students in their home. In an answer to many months of prayer, the L'Abri centre also received permission from Bowen Island officials to re-zone the 21-acre property to build separate residential facilities for staff and students, as well renovate an existing cottage into a small chapel.